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Feb 11, 2012

Bleep Years day six: DJ Mujava's Township Funk (2008)

Bleep Years. It rhymes with 'leap years'. It's a leap month. Bleep... oh forget it. Here's another randomly chosen year which, by coincidence, is exactly one year after the previous post.

2008: DJ Mujava's Township Funk

It's a difficult one this because I've no special love for DJ Mujava. It's more of a representation, a fugure-head for what was happening to music in 2008. Although it's also true that Township Funk stuck in the grooves of my brain like cerebral belly button fluff.

By 2008, Burial had scorched the earth, preparing the way for the opposing chart assaults of The XX and commercial dubstep. There was a shifting of the plates where older sounds (such as the cut 'n' thrusting Prefuse 73) would no longer do. In short, a lot of music was getting a little dull, and, no, that Aphex Twin revival was not coming.

The DJ Mujava track was the most successful of a whole new groundswell of processed computer trickery. This was also the year of Ikonika's utterly unique Please, and it is also the year that saw the rise of Starkey, Hudson Mohawke, Rustie and, on a ravier scale, Zomby. So much rhyming, so much talent. Hyperdub Records were untouchable and electronic music was changing yet again.

2008 was a quiet revival musically and, after a year like 2007, personally. I was finally working back in Manchester too, which was amazing because Manchester is my township. Like I say, I don't know much about Mujava, but listen to those sexy oscillators...